Robert Griffin Movies

Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) investigate the savage murder of a lunch counter proprietor. The main piece of evidence is a linoleum knife with a taped handle--but alas, with no fingerprints. Ultimately, the detectives detectives that the victim may have had the same last name as the murderer. Without tipping off the ending, it can be noted that a young Leonard Nimoy appears as a character named Karlo Rozwadowski...a "big name" indeed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Developing a hankerin' for Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly), wealthy young widow Belle Morgan (Julie Adams) arranges it so Bart can participate in a big-time poker game. Emerging victorious, Bart finds himself the proud owner of the Brasada railroad spur. Unfortunately, the "prize" soon turns out to be far more trouble than it's worth--and Bart once again faces a quick and ignominious demise. Featured in the cast is actor-producer James Lydon, best known for his portrayal of goofy teenager Henry Aldrich in a series of popular B-movies of the 1940s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This romantic melodrama centers on a love triangle shaped by the restless, dissatisfied girl friend of a crop-duster who refuses to marry her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The American government inexplicably tries to send a box of wasps into space, but the mission ends when the rocket crashes in Africa. While on an expedition to recover the insects, an adventurer (Jimmy Lynn Davis) and his team finds the wasps have grown to immense proportions due to accidental radiation treatments. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Kathy Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) is a cynical newspaper columnist in San Francisco, handling women's advice -- by chance one day, the paper's city editor assigns her to cover the woman's angle on the arrival of a pair of L.A. police detectives, Capt. Manny Alidos (Royal Dano) and Lt. Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden), on the hunt for a murder suspect known to be hiding somewhere in the city. They're both pretty button-down types and seem like fish-out-of-water in the more easy-going Frisco, and Kathy quickly clashes with them both, especially when her column appealing to the missing suspect as a woman yields serious dual results -- not only does Kathy boost her profile and readership, but the missing suspect makes contact and is ultimately brought in; in the process, Kathy goes from journalistic back-bencher to media star. That would be the end of the issue, except that Kathy and Bill have become attracted to each other amid their clashes, parries, and thrusts, and decide to get married -- she spurns the offer of a job in New York to move to Los Angeles and settle down to the life of a wife and homemaker. But that proves impossible -- Kathy quickly chafes at what she regards as the empty vacuous chatter of her fellow detective wives' lives and social interactions, and also her place in their pecking order as determined by their husbands' ranks and assignments (and Bill just doesn't rate high enough). Her own life suddenly cut off from career and ambition, and an ability to act on either, she becomes fixated on Bill's career and advancing it and him as a substitute. She contrives to cross paths socially with Alice Pope (Fay Wray), the wife of Inspector Tony Pope (Raymond Burr), who is both the head of an elite detective unit and the top man in her husband's division, and is soon not only getting Bill invited to parties with Pope and the police commissioner, but also cutting her husband's boss Manny Alidos and his wife Sara (Virginia Grey), to whom she's taken a special dislike, out of those same events.
It's not quite enough, however, and Kathy starts socializing on her own with Tony Pope, on Bill's behalf, and the two soon have their own relationship. Bill is still too much of a nice guy, and not careerist enough or assertive enough -- until she feigns distress at receiving poison-pen letters accusing her of having an affair with Pope, and blames Manny and Sara. This drives Bill to confront and assault Alidos, leading to a hearing in Pope's office where the chief of the division -- now very much beholden to Bill for Kathy's sake -- comes down on Bill's side. When the smoke clears, Manny is bounced back into uniform and Bill is made acting captain and put in charge of the homicide unit that Alidos formerly headed. Bill is on his way, and so is Kathy and Pope's relationship. But Pope proves to be a distressingly honorable and loyal man -- when his wife's health takes a turn for the worse, he decides to put in for retirement, and Kathy wants him to recommend Bill as his replacement. He considers it but decides that regardless of what he's done outside of his marriage, the department is too important to compromise the detective division, and that Bill just doesn't have what it takes to head it. Kathy is too deep in her strategy to back off, and also feels betrayed by Pope; now pushed over the edge, she contrives to threaten him with a gun, and is prepared to make good on her threat. Ironically enough, Bill may get his shot yet at heading the division, as he's head of homicide and takes personal charge of the biggest case the department has seen in years -- bringing in Tony Pope's killer. The only question is if and how he can put together the clues and pieces of the puzzle leading back to Kathy. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this western, the trouble begins when a ruthless outlaw impersonates a mine owner. When the sheriff begins to suspect him, the badguy kills him. A government agent, working undercover replaces the sheriff, exposes the crook and wins the love of a purty gal in the process. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Fury at Showdown stars John Derek as a gunfighter who hopes to hang up his guns and live the peaceful life of a cattle ranch. Settling down on his new spread with his brother Nick Adams, Derek finds that he can't live down his reputation. When his brother is murdered on the orders of land-grabbing lawyer Gage Clarke, Derek is forced to strap on his guns again. But Clarke, one step ahead of our hero, tries to save himself from prosecution by kidnapping Derek's girlfriend Carolyn Craig. As the title indicates, a showdown is inevitable, though not as predictable as one might suspect. Fury at Showdown was adapted from a novel by Lucas Todd. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The premiere episode of Maverick opens with a characteristic grace-note from director Budd Boetticher, in which Bret Maverick (James Garner) rides into the town of Echo Springs, caked with trail dust and dressed in seedy "cowboy" clothes--only to re-emerge a few moments later as the well-groomed, sartorially splendid professional gambler that he is. Before long Bret is playing poker with Phineas King (Edmund Lowe), the owner of a large silver mine. When Bret wins the game, King orders his flunkeys to beat up the gambler and boot him out of town. But Mr. Maverick isn't about to be scared off so easily, especially after finding out that King is systematically cheating the local miners. With the help of an old derelict who turns out to be a judge, Bret turns the tables on the unscrupulous silver king--but not before he has a painful encounter with burly Irishman Big Mike McComb (Leo Gordon in his first series appearance). Played "straight" for the most part, this debut episode was based on the unfilmed Warner Bros. property "War of the Copper Kings", which in turn was inspired by the career of copper speculator F. Augustus Heinze. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

During the summer lay-off of the TV series Wyatt Earp, Hugh O'Brian found time to star in the superior sagebrusher The Brass Legend. O'Brien plays a sheriff who takes full credit for the arrest of dangerous outlaw Raymond Burr. In fact, young Donald McDonald, the brother of O'Brien's fiancee Nancy Gates, was largely responsible for Burr's capture, but the sheriff refuses to reveal McDonald's part in the arrest for fear that the boy will be killed by Burr's cohorts. Unfortunately, the local newspaper editor believes that O'Brien simply wants to cheat the boy out of his share of the reward money. The editor blithely prints up the full story in his paper, leading to a near-disastrous denoument. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This probing drama offers an inside look into corruption within the United Auto Workers and is loosely adapted from the true tale of the Reuther brothers. The story begins when someone bombs the union headquarters. Blair Vickers (Dennis O'Keefe), the head of the union, is an honest man whose brother is killed during the crime. The man behind the bombing, Gus Linden (Pat O'Brien), a gangster who has just finished serving time for labor racketeering, is determined to gain control of the UAW. Linden's children do not believe their father is capable of such a terrible crime, and accuse Vickers of having framed him. However, Vickers gradually turns them against their father by having them see for themselves that he is a corrupt, murderous thug who is unfaithful to their mother to boot. Eventually, with the reluctant help of Linden's mistress, Joni Calvin (Tina Carver), Vickers defeats the mob, and restores decency to the union. ~ Steve Press, All Movie Guide

Gary Merrill heads the cast of the unorthodox western The Black Dakotas. The story is set during the Civil War, as President Lincoln tries to mollify the Sioux Indians in order to free up soldiers for more important fighting. Disguised as a Northerner, Brock Marsh (Gary Merrill) intercepts Lincoln's emissary and heads into Sioux territory himself, hoping to steal Union gold for the Southern cause, and to stir up an Indian war between the Sioux and the Dakotas, who have already cast their lot with the North. It soon develops that Marsh doesn't care who wins the war; he wants to abscond with the gold himself. Wanda Hendrix, who despite her divorce from Audie Murphy was still regularly employed in westerns, costars as the daughter of Southern spy Fay Roope, and the sweetheart of good-guy stagecoach driver John Bromfield. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed on sets left over from the Columbia superfeature Salome (and also using generous chunks of stock footage from that film), Serpent of the Nile is a quickie retelling of the Cleopatra-Mark Antony story. The Queen of Egypt is played by Rhonda Fleming, while Antony is essayed by Raymond Burr. Much of the crucial plot information is conveyed by dialogue (we never see Caesar's assassination, for example). As for the Cleopatra-Antony scenes, she is clearly the aggressor, while he comes off as a namby-pamby alcoholic who succumbs all too easily to Cleopatra's synthetic charms. Listed at the bottom of the cast is one "Julie Newmeyer" as a gold-painted exotic dancer: she later gained famed as Julie Newmar. Serpent of the Nile enjoyed a great deal of TV play in 1963, when the Elizabeth Taylor version of Cleopatra was all the rage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide